February 2006

LISNews author birdie has an interesting day job, she sells library oriented cards. She runs In My Book where she sells elegant, long-line cards that start out as a great way to convey greetings to friends, and end up as a bookmark that they can use everyday (a natural recycler!).
The die-cut card (folded size 3 1/8 X 8 1/2″) has a perforated, detachable bookmark as the front of the card, and is blank inside for your note. In My Book is packaged in cellophane with a light red envelope for mailing… You can check out all the Cards and Place An Order on her site, InMyBook.net.
If your library has a gift shop or shelf, or the “friends” run a semi-annual booksale, check out her wholesale website at InMyBook.com

In the recent case, Judge A. Howard Matz of United States District Court for the Central District of California, said Google’s use of thumbnail-sized reproductions in its image search program violated the copyright of Perfect 10, a publisher of X-rated magazines and Web sites, because it undermined that company’s ability to license those images for sale to mobile phone users.

Representatives of publishers and authors who have filed lawsuits against Google over its Book Search program said they believed that the decision raised questions about a case that Google had cited in its defense of the Book Search program.

Update: 02/26 15:24 GMT by B :Bibliofuture notes a post from Lessig where he says “If fair use is lost just because you can imagine a market, then there is no fair, or free use, in a digital age. Every use triggers copyright law, because every use is a copy. And there’s no limit to the ability to imagine a market, so then every use would have to be with permission. That’s the same point made against Sony if all it takes is imagining a non-infringing use, then there could be no such thing as secondary liability.”

Search Engines Web writes “On the Internet, the traffic cops are blind – they don’t look at the data they’re directing, and they don’t give preferential treatment.
That’s something operators of the Internet highway, the major U.S. phone companies, want to change by effectively adding a toll lane: They want to be able to give priority treatment to those who pay to get through faster.
Naturally, consumer advocates and the Web companies that would be paying the toll are calling it highway robbery.

More“

Not sure why, but for some reason, the Ottawa Sun demanded that librarian Barb Clubb (Chief Librarian at the Ottawa Public Library and current President of CLA) reveal information on travel costs of librarians to conferences (IFLA, etc.)in the past year. Seems Clubb and the paper are having some sort of dispute about making that information available to the public.

Here’s the Ottawa Sun’s side of things…we welcome any information on Clubb’s p.o.v.. Canadian librarians, is your local paper giving you trouble on travel and expense issues?

mdoneil writes “There is a job posted on the Florida Library Jobs site that requires that applicants “be willing to attend an Assemblies of God congregation.”

I don’t know about you, but I can’t do that. Sure I have no problem with other people going to the church of their choice, or not going at all. I am even willing to go so far as “should be in agreement with and supportive of the Pentecostal heritage of the Assemblies of God,” although I have no idea what it is, it can’t be too far out – Christians having those 10 Commandments that I am OK with.
But I don’t think I could change churches to get a job no matter what it paid.”

Can you be an EO/AA employer and recruit like this?

Everyone knows all librarians have cats. If you’re reading this you’re probably a librarian, so chances are good you have a cat! But maybe you have a “dog person” in you’re family that might be interested in this News On “Marley and Me — Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog”. The tale of a rambunctious puppy is proving its staying power in the dog-eat-dog world of U.S. best-sellers.

The nonfiction book has been on The New York Times bestseller list for 17 weeks. It seems likely to break the barrier of a million copies sold, a feat generally accomplished by no more than a dozen books each year in the U.S. hardcover non-fiction market.

Jay writes “This article points out that the libraries with outstanding educational and teaching programs can play a vital role in particpating students academic progress.

Read the full article at: Librarians explore role in improving student progress
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A Column From The USA Today says a new technology is now making it into consumer products that just might make electronic books a viable alternative to printed ones. It’s called electronic ink, and it can make a computer display look like a page in a printed book as opposed to a glowing screen.
E-books are a boon for publishers. While the cost of the content (author, editors, layout artists) remains the same, the cost of production and delivery obviously drops significantly. There’s no paper to buy, no shipping charges to pay, no worries about how big a production run should be.

Kelly writes “The company whose motto is, “Do No Evil,” seems to be doing it. They have banned an Australian military space news site, delisting it from their search index, to make happy the Chinese commie government, which doesn’t like the articles the site publishes at spacewar.com The really interesting question in wake of this is: does it signals a trend – will Google delist other news and other types of sites at a government’s behest? For longer-term and out-of-the-box strategic business thinkers, perhaps this will later morph into Google’s offering to delist sites for a fee. Where will it stop? Here’s a statement about Google’s action from Spacewar“

Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Google Co-Founder and President of Technology Sergey Brin today announced the launch of a pilot program to make holdings of the National Archives available for free online. This non-exclusive agreement will enable researchers and the general public to access a diverse collection of historic movies, documentaries and other films from the National Archives via Google Video as well as the National Archives website.